Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

spaceweatherlive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 418 posts

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#131

Post by s1artibartfast »

Syzygies wrote: post #89
Marsymars wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or with an adapter hose you can connect a standard propane tank. If you get the right connector bits, you can use propane with either a dual-burner Coleman-like stove, or with a minimal Jetboil-like backpacking stove.

With a different adapter one can refill camping canisters from a standard propane tank. One "usually" gets away with refilling empty canisters, but these aren't legal for transport in an automobile. Presumably with reason, as in the odds aren't as good as skydiving. I recommend the DOT approved: Flame King Refillable 1LB Empty Propane Cylinder Tank https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MM3GCVO/ It offers some nuanced…

I'm really curious where that presumption comes from. There are tens of thousands of things that are prohibited due to saftyism.

If you understand pressure Regulators and can hook up a BBQ, [is it really] more risky than skydiving

Edit: Switched a safety assertion to a question

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#132

Post by colechristensen »

fl0ki wrote: post #118
colechristensen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Have a well stocked pantry. Costco business centers sell large bags of rice, beans, etc. very cheap. It just doesn't hurt to have some of these things on hand and use them. * Have solar installed on your home. Have some spare disconnected inverters, maybe even a couple of uninstalled panels. * Grow some of your own food in a garden. * Have good relationships with some of your neighbors. * Know how to do stuff yours…

> * Grow some of your own food in a garden. This will get you a handful extra meals, assuming the ideal case where everything was fully grown, harvested, and preserved before the incident. It's one thing to have a village harvest & jam cycle for the seasons, it's another to need to be prepared for the situation to change overnight, all alone and with only a home garden to work with. You're better off using the money,…

You would be surprised how much you can grow in a small space. But also small additions of fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and greens to your long term stores of rice, beans, and preserved foods can go a long way towards making those foods more pleasant and making up for some of the nutrients which are either not present or destroyed by preservation processes. In situations of major food shortages even a little bit goes a very long way.

And also, gardening is a high quality activity for you and your family at any time. It feels good eating a little bit of what you've grown, and there are lots of things that are either not possible or rather expensive to buy but simple to grow.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#133

Post by dole »

briffle wrote: post #34
sillysaurusx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? I guess we could just start building walls of unopened water bottles in our basement… (In my teens I saw a family friend had a bag full of food supplies. I asked someone if that was a prep bag, and they said yes. I thought they were a bit weird. Now I’ve come full circle browsing Amazon for cheap doomsday food.)

Walmart sells 5 gallon water totes for $15. that is essentially 5 days for one person. We have a few on hand (family of 4 plus dog) and every six months or so, I empty them, clean them, and re-fill them. Also, there are gravity filters that work great if you have things like creeks near you.. Berkey Filters are pretty good for filtering out contaminants, as well as 2-bag gravity filters that are really popular with b…

I'll second Berkey Filters. While a full Berkey setup may seem expensive, the filters themselves and not the housing is the important part.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#134

Post by fl0ki »

ghostly_s wrote: post #123
fl0ki wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 8 pounds per gallon It never occurred to me that people needed this spelled out, but I guess it's simpler in most of the world where 1L = 1kg.

I don't think you can blame inch-pounds for this one- even though we rationally know it is heavier than most materials we don't "think of" water as heavy because modern society gives us the luxury of seldom having to handle more than a thirty minute or so supply of it at once.

I wasn't actually commenting on the "heavy" part but the "8 pounds per gallon" part. I can do these conversions on demand but, besides never being the native way I think personally, there are simply more numeric conversions you have to do when you use this system whether or not it's native to you.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#135

Post by tejtm »

lxgr wrote: post #107
ortusdux wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One less obvious CME prep suggestion that I have heard is to prepare for extensive forest fires. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18291443/

Interesting, what's the proposed mechanism for CMEs causing fires? I unfortunately can't access the paper text.

Current is _generated_ in static lengths of wire. At any point the voltage exceeds the design, it arcs. Current passing through imperfect conductors are heating elements.

Both sparks from shorts and excess heating of conductors are possible ignition points.

n.b. I have not look at the paper.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#136

Post by salad-tycoon »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #39
sillysaurusx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? I guess we could just start building walls of unopened water bottles in our basement… (In my teens I saw a family friend had a bag full of food supplies. I asked someone if that was a prep bag, and they said yes. I thought they were a bit weird. Now I’ve come full circle browsing Amazon for cheap doomsday food.)

Dig a well.

You have to have the right kind of ground to drill with this. I think lots of gravel and rocks won’t work well. Never used it myself but was considering it in the past.

https://www.drillawell.com/complete-kit

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#137

Post by hersko »

csteubs wrote: post #56
voisin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will you do once the propane runs out? Solar (and battery) is the way to go.

Not OP, but I use solar and H8-size AGM batteries as primary with a backup diesel generator that I've converted to run on wood gas (and occasionally coal gas). Added a triple stage water filter to the gasifier last year to keep the tar and creosote down. The generator is an old clunker but it's easy to disassemble, which made it an ideal candidate for tinkering and the eventual retrofit.

Please tell me you have a youtube channel or blog on that thing.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#138

Post by fragmede »

withinboredom wrote: post #117
briffle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Oregon, after some severe forest fires, ice storms that shut down whole towns, and the possibility of a Cascadia Subduction Zone event (ie, ~9.0 earthquake) They recommend keeping supplies for 2 weeks to allow time for local areas to get regular supplies of food, water, etc. https://www.oregon.gov/oem/hazardsprep/pages/2-weeks-ready.a...

The problem with that advice is that anyone who could bring you supplies is also suffering from the same problems you are.

For a world affecting CME, it might take a month but a 9.0 magnitude earthquake is not going to destroy the entire world, so you don't need a years worth of food before help arrives. we're talking about a little extra bit of water and food, not an underground bunker. Help from outside the affected area will be coming.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#139

Post by hinkley »

lxgr wrote: post #106
swader999 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World wide grid outage prep? Assuming transformers out continent wide? That's very bad imo. One of the hardest to prepare for. Cities will be impossible. A year of food stored and a really good place to hide from the hordes that want it. Very difficult imo.

A continent-wide transformer blowout would pretty much be the end of modern civilization, as far as I've read. The capacity of both spares and teams capable of swapping them is orders of magnitude too low to do it in time to prevent large-scale collapse of interlinked systems.

restarting a dead grid is the blackest of magic.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#140

Post by daemonologist »

lxgr wrote: post #107
ortusdux wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One less obvious CME prep suggestion that I have heard is to prepare for extensive forest fires. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18291443/

Interesting, what's the proposed mechanism for CMEs causing fires? I unfortunately can't access the paper text.

The paper's a bit hard to read but I don't think it suggests a mechanism, or that the correlation between CMEs and forest fires is statistically significant for that matter. If you email me (address in profile) I can send you a copy.

It does seem plausible that you could get fires as a result of electrical sparks off of long conductors (transmission and communication wires, pipelines, fences), such as with the Carrington event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren...).

Post reply on HN